Note
The present work bears strong similarities with other drawings by Piazzetta, such as Bust of a Boy Looking over His Shoulder in the Pierpont Morgan Library, Head of a Boy, Three-Quarter in the Stadel Museum in Frankfurt, Germany and Head and Shoulders of a Youth, Shown in Three-Quarter Profile, Looking to His Right in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Our work seems to belong to Piazzetta's celebrated Teste di Carattere series, featuring expressive head studies, which the artist executed by rubbing soft black and white chalks in order to create evocative, often pensive and poetic moods to his models. Contrary to several other drawings by the artist, which depict young figures in three-quarter views or looking over their shoulders, our work features a young boy with full-on face view, looking intensely at the viewer. Such drawings were originally executed on blue paper that often faded to brown over time, as seems to be the case with the present work.
Jules Ephraim Mustbaum was a Philadelphia philanthropist known for his important collection of sculptures by Auguste Rodin, which he donated to the Rodin Museum, now holding the largest number of works by the sculptor outside of France.